Broward Officials List Priorities For Legislators

January 30, 1986|By Rick Pierce, Staff Writer

Bills to allow people without a license to baby sit as many as five children, give animal control officers enforcement power and require motorists to wear seat belts are among the requests Broward County commissioners are making of local legislators.

In a 26-page wish list turned over to the delegation at a luncheon on Wednesday, commissioners outlined their priorities for legislators.

Annexation, of course, remains the prime issue, according to Commission Chairman Gerald Thompson. But the legislative delegation has already dumped the commission`s plan and approved one of it`s own.

Most of the other requests involve money or taxing power to get more money. They include such things as court buildings, the emergency 911 phone system, health care, jails, libraries, mass transit, roads and the tricounty commuter rail system.

Rep. Jack Tobin, the Margate Democrat who serves as the delegation`s vice chairman, predicted that ``at least 40 to 50 percent`` of the requests will eventually become law.

The day-care proposal has ``got a chance,`` as does the plan to give animal control officers the power to write tickets, Tobin said.

The county is also backing a statewide lottery. Tobin, however, predicted that the lottery would be killed by the Legislature.

The seat-belt bill already has two local sponsors, Hollywood Democrats Ken Jenne and Fred Lippman. Jenne is a senator, Lippman a representative.

The delegation chairman, Sen. Peter Weinstein, D-Coral Springs, said he would support a county proposal that could ease the jail crisis. A federal judge has decreed that the county cannot have more than 1,613 prisoners in its jail system. But the state Department of Corrections, applying its own rules, is pushing for a 1,442-prisoner limit.

If the state, which is threatening a lawsuit, prevails, the county will probably wind up releasing prisoners.

The proposal would allow counties like Broward that face such a predicament to be responsible only for the federal limit.

Commissioners asked the delegation to push for a law giving local residents a chance to vote on a one-year penny sales tax for jails and court buildings.

But legislators replied that such a law was unlikely to pass. Instead, the Legislature will probably eliminate some of the state`s sales-tax exemptions and use that money to build new prisons, they said.

``There`s almost a crisis in the Florida prison system,`` Weinstein said.

As an alternative, the commission asked that it be given the power to levy an extra penny sales tax to pay for criminal justice facilities, new roads, funds to close the county`s landfill in Davie and money to select and protect water wells.

If that proposal becomes law, the County Commission would simply have to approve it in order to levy the additional penny.